Gentrification in North Philadelphia: Through the Eyes of the Originals

While gentrification is a cultural phenomenon that is sweeping East Coast cities, many newcomers ignore the needs of the original residents and simply turn their safe havens into posh, high-rent districts without the seedy character that makes these neighborhoods so unique.

Submitted:Jan 3, 2010
Reads: 3,861
Comments: 0
Likes: 0

Gentrification is the latest buzz word in urban
planning. Cities all over America are trying to bring
higher-income residency to what have been, in more recent years,
impoverished neighborhoods. Urban ghettos throughout Philadelphia
are beginning to see an influx of middle-to-high income whites,
and the original residents of these neighborhoods are none too
pleased. Gentrification, also commonly
referred to as urban renewal, is creating a disparity in the
character seen in these neighborhoods, and North Philadelphia is
by far no exception.

Before getting into the new elements in these
neighborhoods, it is important to note that these neighborhoods
have been somewhat dynamic over the past fifty years. Most of
North Philadelphia in the 1950s was filled with working class
families of all colour and national origin, but mostly whites.
Lining Broad Street, Lehigh Avenue, Erie Avenue, Allegheny
Avenue, and hundreds of side streets were three-story Victorian
and Edwardian homes, some more spacious than others and often
occupied by just one family who likely worked nearby in
neighbourhood factories. When I say working class, I do not mean
the working poor; North Philadelphia was once full of factories
and plants where the locals found employment in abundance. The
average house cost $5000 or less.

From the late 1950s on, most of Philadelphia saw a
mass migration of white working class families from the inner
city neighborhoods to the newly developed suburbs such as
Levittown. This happened in all majour industrial cities, like
New York and Detroit, where the affects of post-industrial urban
decay were just as great as in Philadelphia. This happened in all
cities where industry growth had been the foundation for the
communities they were built on and when the industries sooner or
later dissipated, the communities were left in suspension. The
new suburban sprawl housing was just as affordable as inner city
housing and was made readily available to first time buyers by
eager creditors
offering low mortgages. This was especially alluring to city
dwellers, although public transportation was limited the farther
you traveled out from the city. Thusly, the hinterlands grew more
and more populated as lower income families, largely dependent on
public transit, began to fill those huge North Philadelphia
houses the relocated residents had left behind, vacant and
reduced in value because of the difficulty to find willing
tenants. Many of these houses were eventually converted to
apartments, and income levels continued to decline as an
increasing number of factories closed up through the 1990s.

The new population of North Philly was largely
African-American, bringing a whole new cultural character to the
neighborhoods. With little work available, many of the rentals
became Section 8 friendly, a type of government housing
assistance intended to keep low income residents in a supposedly
decent home. Additionally, inner city African-American culture of
today provides a stark contrast to the one recognized by the
original white or European American inhabitants. For instance,
due to abject poverty and struggle, crime tremendously increased
especially violent crime. In many cases, it is a matter of
survival. Being often unemployed and without income, many of the
things
middle and upper class families consider essential are considered
minute and unimportant: keeping streets trash free, maintaining
decorative lawns and gardens, fixing problems that arise in a
decaying
centennial house, etc. these are luxuries, inconsequential
elements of living fostering only a certain quality of life
rather than means for continued existence with limited resources
and opportunities available.

Another problem that has contributed to the
overall decline of North Philly as well as other parts of the
inner city is poor education. Inner city schools are typically
crumbling, dangerous in more ways than one, and generally not
conducive to learning. The conditions within these old (more so
unimproved) buildings are not just less than up-to-date, the
conditions are far below the standards and codes that schools in
other parts of the country would allow to operate under. Many
students at schools such as Fels, Penn, and Gratz Highs, often
skip school because they feel that their largely white
teacher
populations do not understand their culture, therefore cannot
relate to their needs. Many Philadelphia teachers receive no
support from administration whatsoever, including bare bones
essentials (in some
cases) such as books. They are often not trained or educated
about how to breach the boundaries of color and culture and teach
with multi-cultural awareness in ways that truly relate to
teaching through
real-life situations, but make successful approaches to these in
only text-book and college course ideals that are isolated from
any real understanding of inner city life.

Additionally, summer feels like "hell" for these
students, as these massive stone school buildings reach
temperatures of up to 110 degrees for the last couple months of
school and the first couple at the beginning of the year. While
public transportation is widely made use of by many inner city
students, unlike students in suburban or rural districts who are
either given rides by car or bus to school, the difference winter
can make in attendance between the contrasting school
environments exists in the difference between standing and
waiting for a bus or walking several blocks on winter mornings
versus getting a toasty ride.

As popular rapper Jay-Z sung in his ghetto anthem,
"Hard Knock Life", "We must not let outsiders violate our
blocks." This seems to be the general consensus on the street in
regards to how the impoverished African-American and Latino
communities in North Philly feel about gentrification. This is a
fairly recent development, but neighborhoods such as Fish town,
Northern Liberties, and Fairmount have already begun experiencing
such "renewal". Top drawer builders have gutted and flipped
hundreds of decaying homes and turned them into high-priced
single family homes or condominiums, attracting young, upwardly
mobile suburbanites to migrate into the exciting world of the
city. Meanwhile,
people who have spent their entire lives in those neighbourhoods
and generally because there were no opportunities available for
seeking better homes, are pushed out by those who have other
options. As such folk move into the neighborhoods, the original
citizens tend to be generally offended and put out by the new
element, not entirely becausethey are completely different in
culture from themselves but more so because they make no attempt
to assimilate with the local residents. Instead, with them they
transport the kitschy/trendy business element only they find
enjoyable and have the incomes to sustain, like art galleries,
café's, and trendy boutiques, giving little back to the economy
they are quickly displacing through supporting their own favoured
hot spots or importing other necessities from chain stores like
Whole Foods or Lowes. Resident African-Americans feel that their
neighborhoods are a safe haven for their culture, which is so far
removed from that of middle and upper class white America.

With the advent of gentrification, there is thusly
created a rift among neighbors. Frankford, a neighborhood not
quite in North Philly, but not quite in the Northeast, is
beginning to experience this phenomenon. Philadelphia, often
touting itself as the "City of Brotherly Love", is becoming less
and less segregated in certain sections, a segregation that was
originally a choice to preserve cultures. A white resident of
Frankford must prepare for the possibility that they will be
subjected to random acts of violence, either to their cars, homes
or persons. The residents of the neighborhood are resistant to
this change, especially because the new element has been
safeguarded from socially diverse communities for so long that
their intolerance of substandard living, and the effects of it in
a neighbourhood, is greater, as they have not experienced the
level of poverty and challenge that the original residents have
either and expect change as a way only to make life in their new
homes more pleasant and up to their personal standards for
living.

Gentrification is, in theory, a wonderful idea.
But, it is basically white realtors and developers who profit
from it in the reverse pattern they used some 40 and 50 years ago
when once their goals were to extract city dwellers and place
them into their new suburban housing rather than extracting them
from the suburban slump to profit off them in their urban
housing. These, the same people who we re once uninterested in
how their moves from the city after blockbusting efforts took
place were dismantling a community, are now with little sympathy
dismantling the communities that have developed in their wake,
where they once walked away without looking back, abandoning what
later became needed, and are now stealing it back. Yes, it makes
the houses more habitable and more pleasing to the eye, but at
what cost? As wealthier white professionals seep into the inner
city, they are
thoughtlessly robbing the neighborhoods of their character, that
seedy element that just makes the inner city what it is. That
unique seedy character is fading away fast and soon there will be
no refuge for
those dependent on this distinctively urban setting.

Soon the entire city will be a hopelessly
homogenized fashionable high rent district, full of faceless
clones in metro chic clothing and designer sunglasses. The poor
minority residents will no longer be able to keep up with high
cost of living, and since they cannot migrate elsewhere, as
elsewhere is even more expensive, a racial tension, like that in
Frankford, will ensue. Just because a culture is not focused on
the positive elements so favored by educated whites, does not
mean that richer people have a right to invade the space and make
it their own. In essence, gentrification will destroy North
Philadelphia's native culture. We are shaped by our environments
and in turn the environments we live in shape who we are. It's
difficult to believe how a city, which is made up of
interdependent people, who form a community, will continue to
function as a city in this sense once the looming transformation
is complete and the concentration of those living there is no
longer comprised of people whose lives depend on the lives of
those living around them to survive.